


plumeria (new beginnings)

by ApprenticeofDoyle



Category: Enola Holmes (2020)
Genre: Enola deserves the world, F/M, Fluff, Holmes POV, Mild Fix-It, Post-Film, Reunions, Tewky is just a sweet bean, author makes Sherlock try a little harder, movie-verse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-05
Updated: 2020-10-05
Packaged: 2021-03-07 18:15:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,670
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26832028
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ApprenticeofDoyle/pseuds/ApprenticeofDoyle
Summary: “Sherlock Holmes,” the Marquess says, with that familiar, blinking awe he has only just grown accustomed to seeing in the eyes of strangers. “You’re Enola’s older brother.”Enola’s name is said with an inarguable degree of warmth.Infatuated, he thinks, confirming his own suspicions.Unexpectedly, the fannish light fades from the Viscount Tewksbury’s youthful face, replaced with a quality much steelier. “If you are looking for your sister, Mr. Holmes, I’m afraid you’ll receive no help from me.”Besotted,he revises idly.
Relationships: Enola Holmes & Sherlock Holmes, Enola Holmes/Viscount "Tewky" Tewksbury
Comments: 124
Kudos: 1650





	plumeria (new beginnings)

**Author's Note:**

> this movie was adorable. i loved a lot of it. as a woman who has loved SH since i was a child, Enola resonates with the girl i used to want to be.
> 
> but i needed a little more from Holmes. so here it is, the apology Enola deserves (but written in like, an hour)

**plumeria (new beginnings)**

Two weeks after the reform bill passes, and he narrows down Enola’s lodgings to the neighborhood, he determines to pay the Basilwether estate a visit.

The journey to the country, to his relief, is not wasted. The Viscount is home, likely adjusting to the responsibilities of his new station alongside the start of the Dowager's criminal trial; he is barely left to observe the typical polished luxury of the manor’s parlor for more than two minutes. He came unannounced, a breach of propriety with any lord despite his own burgeoning notoriety, but he wagers that if this viscount has secured his sister’s loyalty, he is unlikely to stake his pride in pomp and circumstance.

He is proven right when the Viscount greets him in a library, eyes wide and bright like a doe’s, surrounded by mahogany shelves bearing authors he recognizes but has not cared to read. _Natural biology_ , he notes, half-interested, absorbing data without deliberation. _Lepidoptery and aviary treatises_. _Overwhelming collection of botany literature._ Behind the slim, impeccably dressed young nobleman, he can see the edges of a honeysuckle stem poking out from a hand-made press. A curious hobby, for a lord of such background, but he is hardly one to judge another’s habits.

“Sherlock Holmes,” the Marquess says, with that familiar, blinking awe he has only just grown accustomed to seeing in the eyes of strangers. “You’re Enola’s older brother.”

Enola’s name is said with an inarguable degree of warmth. _Infatuated,_ he thinks, confirming his own suspicions.

Unexpectedly, the fannish light fades from the Viscount Tewksbury’s youthful face, replaced with a quality much steelier. “If you are looking for your sister, Mr. Holmes, I’m afraid you’ll receive no help from me.”

 _Besotted,_ he revises idly.

“I see you don’t deny your acquaintance with my sister.” He essays the young noble a smile. “Good. For it is about her I wish to speak.”

“As I told you,” Tewksbury began, pale cheeks ruddying with indignation. “I’m afraid—”

“I am not here to press you for information on her location,” he says. He sits down in the empty study across the Viscount, and the boy mirrors him, returning uneasily to his seat. “If Enola wishes to be found by me, then she will make it so herself.” It is the truth, but it has not, of course, stayed him from looking.

Tewksbury frowns. “Then what is it you wish to know, Mr. Holmes?”

Sherlock crosses a casual leg, leaning forward on his knee. “Tell me, your Lordship,” he asks. “What are your intentions towards my young sister?”

The Viscount Tewksbury, Marquess of Basilwether, turns as red as a Tudor rose.

“I—” the Viscount squeaks, and Sherlock represses a smirk when the young man clears his throat. “I should hardly see how that is any of your business, Mr. Holmes. From what I understand, Enola may be your sister, but you are estranged.”

 _Estranged._ A cold, practical word for what they are. Several months ago, he might have used it himself. Now, it sits bitterly in the hollow of his stomach, a stagnant pool of guilt. What form of man is he, to be estranged from his sixteen year old sister?

“You are not incorrect, your Lordship,” he says lowly. “Regretful though I may be that is the case.”

Tewksbury frowns once more, deeply for a young man barely of university age. The weight of his family’s duty tempers his obvious youth into something harder. Though, he thinks distantly, surviving attempted murder by one’s own grandmother may have born some impact.

“She sacrificed her own happiness for me, Mr. Holmes, in the belief it would save my life." Tewksbury's voice sharpens. "It wouldn’t have been necessary if her wishes had been respected in the first place.”

Sherlock presses his lips together. Old excuses rise the surface, utterly paltry in retrospect. He had believed once that all Enola required in life was their mother. Now, he has begun to understand that they should have provided more than merely what she needed.

“No,” he agrees solemnly. “But I cannot change what has been done. I can only endeavor to make amends through wiser action.”

“What is ‘wiser action’?” asks Tewksbury, skeptical. “She has informed me of what you and your brother consider proper. For her sake and yours, Mr. Holmes, I hope you have reconsidered.” Storm clouds roll over the young man’s fine features. “I saw with my own eyes what that school was like. She does not belong there.”

The memory of Enola on her knees in their family home, tears in her dark eyes, sends him cold. Her face, so like their mother’s, pale with distress when he dared meet her gaze, his own cowardice blocking the sight of her pain from view—

In his mind, he recalls with vivid clarity an incongruous flush of pink, asymmetrical, blooming on her left cheek. A missed detail, he realizes, and finds himself grow yet colder. _Oh, Enola,_ he thinks, shame gripping his heart. _How we have failed you._

“No,” he says again, voice harder than before. “She doesn’t. I will send her nowhere she does not wish to go. I will send her nowhere at all. Enola cannot be controlled. My brother was a fool to believe it, and I his equal in standing by to watch him fail.”

“She deserves people who realize how brilliant she is,” Tewksbury says firmly, and the young man flushes once more, as if he did not intend to reveal his hand so uncontested. Sherlock cannot bury a small smile.

“She does,” he says, genuinely. “Are you such a person, Lord Tewksbury?”

The Viscount opens his mouth, perhaps to shift the conversation, before something resolute takes hold of his features, erasing his embarrassment. “She saved my life, Mr. Holmes. Three times. The first time, she did not even _know_ me. Yet she rescued me from a brute twice her size, and leapt off a _train_ to put distance between us and an assassin.”

He already knows this, and yet, the information lands differently upon hearing it from the Marquess’s own mouth.

“She is remarkable,” he says simply.

“ _More than,”_ Tewksbury says, strained. There is a thread of emotion to the young man’s voice now, a shaken intensity, that discomforts him. “You were not there. You did not see her fight. She dodged bullets by inches. Threw herself on the back of an armed man.” Abruptly, the Viscount seizes his starched collar, pulling it down to reveal a livid red line, the imprint of folded metal grooves forced against the fair skin of his neck. “He struck her down without mercy, nearly killed her, but she did not give up. _For me._ ”

Sherlock finds himself without an immediate response, to the tale or the fire burning in the Viscount’s eyes. The perilous picture he painted twists something behind his ribcage. He knows of Enola’s tenacity, her intellect, but the reminder of the danger she had found herself in does not fill him with the same pride it once did. 

_Dangle your feet in the water,_ he'd told her.

He thinks of a pinecone named Dash, and Tewksbury’s words ring in his head. “ _He struck her down without mercy.”_ Abruptly, he feels ill.

“She deserves better,” he says, dispelling the irrational feeling with impunity. Enola is safe and well. “Than the treatment my brother and I have subjected her to, true. But she need not live alone without resources. The money my mother left her will not last forever. I wish to make amends properly, and to take better responsibility for her care. In the least, offer her financial support.”

Tewksbury looks somewhat appeased, the heat in his gaze cooling. 

“In light of your… _acquaintance,_ ” He cannot resist the tone his voice takes, nor ignore his amusement as the Viscount blushes furiously at the implication. “—I would be indebted, sir, if you could deliver a message to Enola on my behalf.”

“Are you not London’s finest detective?” the Viscount asks, and titters to himself at his own impertinence, clearing his throat. “Erhm. Why not deliver the message yourself, Mr. Holmes? …Apologies, in my experience, are better given in person.”

“You may be right in that, your Lordship,” he says, distantly amused that a boy half his age should be giving him advice, and bemused that he should have behaved in such a way to require it. “But as said before…Enola does not appear to those she means to evade. You alone have her trust."

“…I see,” Tewksbury says faintly. There is a developing nervousness to his voice that Sherlock notices immediately. The Viscount’s leg has begun to bounce, a verified sign of anxiety, and his eyes have begun to slip and quickly refocus on Sherlock as if fighting the desire to look elsewhere. His body has twisted, angled towards something he consciously refuses to look at, and Sherlock follows the thread to a tea tray, with only one cup but scattered sugar crystals near the edge of where another must have been. _Very good,_ he thinks, chest warm with pride. Coolly, his eyes sweep the room. _Ah. Could hardly have hidden better myself._

“Thank you for your time, Lord Tewksbury,” he says, getting to his feet. Tewksbury rises too, only the faintest drops of sweat quivering on his brow. He musters a smile.

“I will…consider your request, Mr. Holmes,” he says, with a magnanimous air that needs a few years to earn gravitas. 

Sherlock smiles benignly. The young lord is not a bad match for his sister. Luckily for him, he possesses a spine, else she would have crushed him at first meeting. “That is all I ask,” he says. He lifts his volume of his voice, just a hair, just enough. “I care for her, and wish only for her safety and happiness. My brother Mycroft has agreed to transfer her guardianship to me, while our mother remains abroad. I wish only for her to know that, as _my_ ward, she is always welcome in my home.”

Tewksbury nods seriously. “I am happy to hear it, sir.”

He dips his head, in deference not to the man’s title but to his sister’s own regard for the man. It is a comfort that she has made such an ally, youthful romance or not. “Farewell, Lord Tewksbury. Do look after my sister.”

At that, he turns on a heel to go, and hesitates with a buried smile at the sound of a parting curtain.

“I can look after myself,” he hears, and he pivots to see Enola, emerged from her hiding place behind the library’s floor-length velvet drapery. She’s wearing men’s trousers, suspenders, and a powder blue shirt, her rich brown hair in a tight, braided crown upon her head. She looks healthy, well-fed, and her face is stony despite the glimmer in her eyes.

“I know you can,” he says. He cannot smother a flicker of smugness as she registers his lack of surprise at seeing her appear. Fondness, too, he must admit. She despises failure with the same ire he does. She swallows visibly, her thin throat working.

“…Did you mean it?” she asks, voice low and strong. The only reason he recognizes the wavering in her eyes is because it’s like peering into a mirror. He does not know why it took so long to realize, how very much like him she is. “You…asked to be my guardian instead?”

“Yes.”

Her eyes shine, dove-like hands twitching at her sides. “Oh,” she says. She says nothing, trembling finely, waiting, and he remembers a young lord’s wisdom.

“Enola,” he says. “I am sorry.”

Her face flickers, shock at the admission overpowering her, before emotion flees behind a wall of iron. “For?” she asks, voice only just quivering.

“For Mycroft,” he says. “For failing to defend our mother. For allowing our brother to put his society standards above your happiness.” He inhales sharply, and exhales. 

“For not listening,” he says, quieter now. “And for not writing. For not coming home. I’m sorry, Enola.”

Tears brim openly at the edge of her eyelids. “You should be,” she chokes out. “Mother was my everything, but…you were my hero, Sherlock.”

The words strike his chest like bullets, and he resists the urge to close his eyes, to turn away from the shame and slip behind the tall bannisters of cool logic. “I realize I cannot take back those years,” he says. “Nor my mistakes. But if you allow me…I will do my best from now on, to be the elder brother you deserve.”

She stares at him with eyes the same color as his father's, her lovely face wrinkling. Without provocation, she rushes over to him, and for a moment he wonders if she is going to hit him when suddenly, thin, strong arms encircle his waist. She buries her face in his chest and he does his best not to stiffen, stunned, at the contact.

Her grip tightens as she sniffles into his vest, and he realizes he is frozen, hands lifted above her in helpless surprise. He has not been embraced since he was a child, even younger than she. He can barely tolerate the touch of others, as it is, and the feeling of her tiny warmth pressed against him is foreign and strange.

 _Give her more than what she needs,_ he reminds himself. Fighting the discomfort, he slowly lowers his arms, and wraps them tentatively around her diminutive shoulders. She clutches him, like the child she is, and he remembers how she used to cling like a limpet to their father’s pantleg, shrieking with joy.

She sniffs loudly once more, pulling back to reveal a red, tear-streaked face and a smile he can only call beautiful. He has not seen his mother in years, but Enola wears joy as she does, positive emotion radiating from every pore.

“Thank you,” she says thickly. An awkward beat, and he squeezes her shoulder. She gives a watery giggle. “…So I don’t have to go to boarding school.”

“No,” he says firmly.

“And I won’t have to rent a room anymore?”

“You can trade Coulston Lane for a place at Baker Street,” he says, and smirks at her foiled expression when he mentions the street. A guess of three possibilities, but the correct one. “I recently secured lodging there, and for now, it has a spare room on a separate floor. I was looking for a fellow-boarder, but arrangements can wait until you come of age.” His eyes slide to the Viscount, who has been quietly watching their exchange in silence. The boy blushes at his lofted eyebrow, and keeps it raised when Enola _ahems_ with a scowl pointed upwards in his direction. His smirk broadens.

“As for your education,” he continues, and Enola crosses her arms. “Rumor has it that I have a female protégé in my employ, but she has inexplicably disappeared. Overcome by a personal loss, I believe. I don’t suppose you would be interested in serving as her replacement?”

Happiness spreads across his sister’s face like sunlight. “Perhaps,” she whispers, delighted. 

“Then there is little time to lose,” he says, smiling. Her exuberance is catching. It is lucky they share the same passion, he thinks. _Or perhaps, a hair dangerous._ Then, with deep-running amusement, _Lestrade will be thrilled._ “You have potential, but still have much more to learn, Enola Holmes, about the science of detection.”

“What are we waiting for, then?” she asks, cheeky. “The game is afoot.”

One of their mother’s favorite sayings, as her fingers hovered over the first pawn on the chessboard. Rightness settles over him, like a wave over warm sand.

“To work,” he says, nodding soberly. She beams, and he senses keenly that he'll never again know a moment's peace.

He also realizes that for the first time since he left home, he will no longer be alone.

As she takes his arm, and he allows her to, he finds it is not so terrible a feeling.

**Author's Note:**

> enola holmes said fuck the Doyle estate, Holmes has feelings. i agree. Cavill!Holmes is a little hard to channel (less formal. intimidatingly handsome. smiley. no Watson) so i blended movie dialogue/tone with a more...Holmesish approach. i hope LMAO
> 
> tewky's honeysuckle means an expression of affection. they're very sweet babies and i love flower language in this film, ok?
> 
> liked it? drop a comment below or hmu on tumblr @apprenticeofdoyle or @biwatson. thanks for reading. <3


End file.
